What I Hear Is Real
by HattaPanza
Summary: Jane Eyre/The Time Traveler's Wife cross over. What role does Henry play in the outcome of Jane and Mr. Rochester's future?


EDWARD: What I heard is real. The voice was not the fabrication of a desperate mind. Jane's words came to me as though the sound had not traversed a distance to comfort me as it whispered in my ear, but that it had encircled me, the whole of me, and come from the inside out.

Perhaps I am going crazy. I question, it's true, my lucidity at times when I am overcome with the loneliness and the humility that so enrapture me; the darkness makes it formidable to distinguish between dream and reality, but I know my position between God and earthly truth. God would not delude me so harshly. He would not tempt me so pointlessly with such disillusionment. My mind is not so belittled. Any madness I may harbor springs only from my knowledge of Jane's absence and further from my lack thereof concerning her fortuity.

It was real. On this I would wager my life. Now, all I have left is to wait. Wait for Jane, for her voice, for her love, for death, or, perhaps, for all at once.

HENRY: I am in Kendrick's office, sitting in the waiting room. It seems sterile. The general effect is not very friendly, and the pink stripes on the walls are starting to get to me. The young receptionist named Leah, who I have never seen before, chews her gum to the rhythm of whatever Gun's N' Roses CD she's listening to and plucks at the black studded rings around her wrist. She shoots me bored, quizzical looks, and I sit nonchalantly in my burlap-upholstered chair, waiting patiently to be taken away.

Soon Kendrick makes an appearance, seeming ravaged, sweating and looking slightly winded due to his twenty years of excessive nervous-smoking. After our brisk exchanges of greeting, he abruptly strides away in the opposite direction, evidently expecting me to follow. We pass his office along the way, and I wonder what's going on if he isn't planning on heading for our usual discommodious hangout. He opens an unfamiliar door to an undersized, yellow conference room where a man dressed in a cheap, beryl-colored suit sits at the table.

"Alright, Henry," Kendrick says. "I think you're really going to find this interesting." The unfamiliar face across from me is grinning from ear to ear with a Cheshire smile you'd expect primarily on an opium user or a toothless derelict. He crosses his right leg over his left, revealing black checkered socks under false leather Brogues, and sinks down satisfactorily into his seat.

He smiles at me and thrusts out his hand. "John Habrath," he introduces himself.

"Henry DeTamble." I nod at Kendrick who lifts a cigarette he's just lit, his mouth distorted into a triumphant curve. He's really excited.

"This is a huge breakthrough, Henry. This is what we've been waiting for. John here can take our research to the next level." He takes a long drag, looking at me intently, and then he says, "He time travels."

I look at Habrath who looks eagerly, serenely at me, and I am astounded beyond anything I've ever experienced before. I remember Clare in the Beau Thai, years ago, telling me that in the future there were 

other time traveler's; that more of us actually existed out there, but it would take time for them to reveal themselves. I suppose in all the tumult of meeting a flusteringly attractive stranger who claimed to be the wife of my future self, I brushed this aside as comparatively insignificant, but now there are few other things I would consider more vital.

I sit, dumbfounded and practically speechless, waiting for further explanation. Kendrick obliges.

"John, here, came to me yesterday, and we've done a couple of informal, little experiments. I've been up all night, but he's more than proven himself to be the real deal. He heard about our research. Uh, who did you say told you, John?"

"Your receptionist's husband I think knows my brother." He flashes a maniacal smile. It's very strange.

"Oh, yes. Had to let poor Margaret go last night for violating our privacy agreement. I get a lot of flack for all this time traveling business, you know, and any little slip of the tongue can be a liability." I latently grieve for Margaret's lost employment, but most of my attention is still focused on Habrath.

"So you've seen it; you've seen him do it?" I ask.

"Yes. In fact, I know this might be a blow to your ego, Henry, but he's even more unique than you?"

"What do you mean?" I say. I can't even fathom anything more unique than the ability to disappear into a where and when completely disconnected from one's own existing time.

Kendrick looks at Habrath who continues to sport the ridiculous smile I already hate. "Why don't you explain, John."

Habrath looks at me. His peculiar garb and manufactured charm are strangely mesmerizing. "Well, there isn't much to it, from what I gather. Kendrick said you can't take things with you when you disappear. Everything that happens to you sounds identical to what happens to me, except that I can take things with me."

I am shocked and skeptical. I detect a certain complacency crossing his lips, but perhaps it's just my raging jealousy deluding me. "Wait, I don't understand. That doesn't sound plausible. It's supposed to be a chromosomal impairment, so it should only affect the molecules of the body, nothing else. How can you take other matter with you?" I look at Kendrick.

"I don't know, Henry, but that's what we want to find out. If he can do it, maybe you can too."

I am suddenly hopeful, jubilant, but I try to maintain some restraint, to keep myself from expecting too much. "Meaning no more popping up naked on Michigan Avenue."

Kendrick raises his eyebrows. "Exactly. You've hit it."

"This is great," I say, now voraciously delighted. I turn to Habrath. "Did you have to learn how to take things with you, or could you just do it naturally?"

I look for the inevitable signs in Habrath, for any similarities he may have to me. His hair is blonde; he's maybe about forty five, and I realize he's thin, probably from hours of deserted strandedness in other time, but his face is different, rounder, more content. I notice his eyes, and there is no trace of the fear I see etched into mine every time I look the mirror by years, nearly decades, of escaping and running and worrying and hiding. He doesn't look like me, I realize. There is probably no relation between us; at best the alliance is very distant. I don't even know him, but somehow, even through his disconcerting eccentricity, I still feel akin to this man.

Habrath smiles at me again. "Well, I remember when I was a kid, and the first few times I turned up naked like you. But it was embarrassing, you know, and I was just a little kid." Habrath stops, darts his eyes toward me, smiling. "Oh, you know," he says. I smile back hesitantly. 'Too true, too true', I think, and it isn't very funny to me. Habrath returns to his explanation, twiddling with the contractible DNA model on Kendrick's table. "So, anyway, I kept trying to take things with me. When I started to feel dizzy, I grabbed on to anything, a shoe, a bag of potato chips, some underwear, and waited to see what would happen. Didn't work at first, but then one day - I was about eight I think - I held on to this green army jacket my dad used to have, and I concentrated really hard." Habrath narrows his eyes into slits, demonstrating his focus. "I remember something just clicked, and, sure enough, I found myself three days later at a Piggly Wiggly in Cincinnati, army jacket in hand, the rest of my clothes left at home."

I suddenly envy this man to disparity. "So, after that you could do it? That was it? Just like magic?"

"Well, no, it was gradual, but eventually I could make it fully dressed, and then later I could take other things with me. It made work fantastic, really fascinating."

"John's a phoneticist," Kendrick adds quickly, as though this has anything to do with the topic at hand.

That's interesting. They look at me like I'm apparently missing something. "Really?" Somehow I don't seem to care.

He persists talking about his job. I only half listen. He mentions something about advanced eavesdropping and recording technology. Evidently, he occasionally takes it with him on his sojourns into time. I don't know why he would want to do this. To me it seems dangerous. To me it seems endless – the possibilities of what that could affect in the past. But it's none of my business, and, quite frankly, I don't really give a damn.

When the meeting ends, I find myself on The El in a daze, and frantic to share the news with Clare. Right now everything seems perfect. Clare and I aren't struggling at all, Alba is healthy and beautiful, Clare's career will be taking off soon after her new exhibition, and, now, finally, unbelievably, I might get to wear clothes when I travel. Life is sweet, life is good. What could be better?


End file.
